Dollhouse - Table of Contents

Season One: 

Ghost
The Target
Stage Fright
Gray Hour
True Believer
Man on the Street
Echoes
Needs
A Spy in the House of Love
Briar Rose
Omega
Epitaph One

Season Two: 

Vows
Instinct
Belle Chose
Belonging
The Public Eye
The Left Hand
Meet Jane Doe
A Love Supreme
Stop Loss
The Attic
Getting Closer
The Hollow Men
Epitaph Two: The Return

Dollhouse - I’m just the porch light, waiting for you.

Dollhouse: 1x12 Omega.

Throughout the first season of “Dollhouse”, I was waiting for its potential to be realized. I remember watching it for the first time, wondering where the show was going, desperately waiting for an episode that would give it some kind of direction. Prior to “Man on the Street”, I probably even considered giving up on it entirely, and the episodes right after didn’t exactly live up to my expectations (although I found them much more relevant watching them again after the second season).
The ending of “Briar Rose” changed everything, and I still remember the feeling I had after “Omega”: like something I had somehow put into a drawer of “interesting, but not fully realized” had punched me in the face, in a good way. It’s not even the grand finale in this episode that I find so stunning (strangely, I feel exactly the same way about the final scenes of “The Hollow Men” – the set-up feels way more interesting than the solution).

“He asked me if I always wanted to be a doctor.”

It is probably obvious from my re-caps that Claire / Whiskey is my favourite character in “Dollhouse”. She is the one who is as sentient of her existence as an Active as Echo is, but she is also the one who doesn’t get out – the tragic counterpart to Echo’s success in freeing herself. As the ruddy band of renegades makes its way towards safe haven, Whiskey guards the Dollhouse, finally dying in it after fulfilling her final purpose. The Topher-Claire thing starts right there, after Alpha managed to plant seeds of doubts about her identity in Claire’s head: After Topher asks, “Who could fathom the mind of a crazy person”, she responds “the one who made him crazy? Maybe?”
“Omega” is one of the few instances where the viewers knows more than one character. I even prefer the reveal that we get in the terrifying, “Natural Born Killers”esque flashback to Boyd being the Big Bad in “Getting Closer”. It can’t really be that big of a surprise, considering that Joss Whedon already cast Amy Acker as two completely different characters in “Angel” – we should expect her to be versatile enough to potentially be an Active. The scene still works if you go into it with the knowledge that the silhouette dancing in the background is going to be Whiskey, not Echo – in a character that is as different as possible to the quiet Doctor Saunders who doesn’t dare to leave the Dollhouse.
The thing about the characters of this show in the final episode (not counting “Epitaph One”, which wasn’t actually aired) is that we have a vague idea about what they stand for: Their convictions, their priorities, how they view the Dollhouse and what it does. We have absolutely no clue about their past, about where they come from. The “Dollhouse” is twelve episodes old and it could still go anywhere with its characters – and it is that kind of freedom that made the second season as surprising as it is. Usually, when characters float like this, with no real anchor that connects them to a certain past, they become weak, but in this case, it works to their advantage.

Victor: “It hurts.”
Claire: “I know it does. It won’t always.”
Victor: “I’m not my best anymore. I want to be my best.”
Claire: “Yes. I know you do.”
Victor: “How can I be my best now? Doctor Saunders? How can I be my best please?”
Claire: “You can’t, Victor. You can’t be your best. Your best is past. Your past you can’t even remember. You’re ugly now. You’re disgusting. All you can hope now is pity and for that, you’re gonna have to look somewhere else.”

Claire UNDERSTANDS Victor because this is what she went through, even though she might not remember it, but at the same time, she has no sympathy – she is not programmed to offer empty promises, and this is Claire in the process of realizing who she is. As she is treating Victor, her brain is trying to put together the pieces. This craving to be their best is an essential part of the programming of every Active – part of Claire’s denial of consolation is her disgust, or dislike, of things that are imperfect, including herself. This is what makes her one of the most intriguing and tragic characters Joss Whedon has ever created.

Topher: “Doctor Saunders?”
Claire/Whiskey: “I think you gave me more Computer skills than required by a medical doctor. It was very easy to hack your system. I’m curious…”
Topher: “About?”
Whiskey: “Well, I guess I understand why you wouldn’t want to waste an investment, and I suppose why hire a new physician, when you can just imprint the broken doll. But why did you decide it was so important for me to hate you? I think that’s strange.”
Topher: “You didn’t open it.”
Whiskey: “No.”
Topher: “Aren’t you curious to see who you really are?”
Whiskey: “I know who I am.”

Apart from the fact that FOX only gave Dollhouse two seasons, I think the loss of Amy Acker for a good part of the second season is probably one of the worst things that could happen to the show. She is LIKE Echo. She is an Active who so desperately clings to the idea that she has a right to exist, not as the person her body used to belong to, but as the person she has become. She is afraid of disappearing. Claire is doomed to become the ghost that haunts the Dollhouse, but before that, she is even more eager than Echo to assert her own identity. She does not want to die. At the end of the episode, she allows herself to be kind, giving Victor a lollipop, just as the original Doctor Saunders used to: This is her place now. She has a reason to exist, and the person that used to occupy her body before is irrelevant.

An unfortunate technological anomaly

It’s interesting to see Ballard in the position to dictate terms in this episode, after weeks of seeing him always a step behind the Dollhouse, and essentially hopelessly overpowered by its power and influence. After bringing Alpha into the Dollhouse, he actually finds himself in a position of relative power, and he uses it surprisingly well: First, he sends away the despised FBI agent who replaced him (played by the actor who must have at least five twins). Then he decides to help Adelle and Boyd in their search for Alpha and Echo – which negates the idea that the Dollhouse is the ultimate evil. On the other hand, “Dollhouse” works so hard at creating the idea that Ballard is morally corrupt for getting involved in something he morally despises that we completely overlook Boyd’s actions.
Ballard is also the one person who understands who Alpha once was: he discovers that the Dollhouse used to experiment on prisoners. It’s not just the sense of righteousness that prevails in an Active, even after wiping and imprinting: unfortunately, there are also some particular violent streaks that Topher’s magic chair can’t cure. Alpha’s existence is based on an accident, an unfortunate chain of events, but this is how identity is sometimes created: incidentally. Echo is a product of a very similar incident.

Welcome to your castle, my princess. Behold, your throne.  / Wait, what, it’s like a magic trick? We’re gonna make her disappear?

Even the most crazy and sociopathic creature that Joss ever created craves nothing more than an equal, a person who might understand him. Being one of a kind, unique, might make Alpha powerful and dangerous, but it also makes him the loneliest person on this planet. Remember: in the second season premiere, Claire plays clips of “Frankenstein’s bride” to Topher, arguing perhaps that not only Alpha craved to create a counterpart, but Topher himself also created her to even out his flaws.

Alpha has an argument for the destruction of Caroline: unlike Sierra, she actually signed a contract. She did give up her identity and “betray” Echo – and is no longer a person Echo can rely on, especially now that she is in the process of becoming her own, independent person (which is what a good part of the second season is going to be about). “She is responsible for all the terrible things you can’t remember”. This play well into the fact that the literal Caroline, the woman now occupying the body of the woman Alpha and “Crystal” took hostage, seems so naïve and helpless in comparison to the person Echo has become in the course of this season. We, the viewers, aren’t really supposed to like Caroline. She is imperfect and flawed, like human beings usually are.

Topher: “She will ascend, she will know, and then she will kill you.”
Caroline: “What? Why?”
Alpha: “Because… that’s what we need. A blood ritual. Yes, yes, we’ve got to have one of those. I mean, the Aztecs knew it. The pre-Hellenic Minoans knew it, for God’s sakes. From the moment man first clawed his way out of the primordial ooze and kicked off his fins, he’s understood that the gods require blood. New life from death. The ancients had it right. But the old gods are back. Alpha, meet Omega.”

Echo is not predictable. Adelle ends up underestimating her abilities, and so does Boyd, eventually. Alpha thinks that he is creating a counterpart, when in fact, the person emerging from the blood ritual, from the twisted version of the magic chair, is a perfect antagonist. Echo becomes conscious of all her imprints (everybody, apart from the original, is now living in her head), but that doesn’t make her a willing companion, because that part of her that wants to help, that has a very clear sense of right and wrong, that essential part she got from Caroline and perfected, is still present.

Echo: “Her is me. You made that very clear.”
Alpha: “No. Her is the old you, try and keep up.”
Echo: “I’m way ahead of you. You think we’re gods.”
Alpha: “We’re not just human anymore, we’re not multiple personalities, we’re many personalities.”
Echo: “We’re not gods.”
Alpha: “Fine. Übermensch. Nietzsche predicted our rise. Perfected, objective, something new.”
Echo: “Right, new superior people, with a little German thrown in. What could possibly go wrong? We’re not new. We’re not anything; we’re not anybody, because we’re everybody. I mean, I get it. I understand it. I’m experiencing, like, 38 of them right now. But I somehow understand that not one of them is me. I can slip into one, actually it slips into me. They had to make room for it. They hollowed me out. There is no me. I’m just a container.”
Caroline: “There is a you. She’s right here.”
Echo: “He may be crazy but he’s right. You walked away from me. You left me alone in that place. Why did you do that?”
Caroline: “It’s complicated.”
Echo: “Sweetheart, however complicated you thought our life was before…”
[…]
Caroline: “Who are you?”
Echo: “I’m Echo.”
Caroline: “And who is that?”
Echo: “She’s nobody. I’m just the porch light, waiting for you.”
Caroline: You have to put me back. You have to put me back in that wedge. You need to get Wendy back in her body.”
Echo: “Why do you have to go back in the wedge? Why don’t you come home?”
Caroline: “I did sign a contract.”
Echo: “I have 38 brains. Not one of them thinks you can sign a contract to be a slave, especially now that we have a black president.”
Caroline: “We have a black president? Okay. I am missing everything.”

This exchange is the central moment of “Omega”: Echo is unlike Alpha. She isn’t his Omega. But she is also very much unlike Caroline. Her sense of wrong and right is more accurately tuned. She understands the Dollhouse better than Caroline ever did, and she would never honour that contract Caroline signed. There is also an identity crisis in the realization that she is different from the person she emerged from: who is Echo, if she isn’t Caroline? Is she more than just a place holder, more than a hollowed-out human being waiting to be given a purpose by somebody else?

In the end, it is Ballard who “saves” Caroline. He catches the wedge on which her identity is stored. He finally, in a very twisted way, is the knight in shining armour, but the princess he does rescue from the castle isn’t Caroline, isn’t Echo: The woman leaving the Dollhouse is Madeleine.
Finally, The ghost that haunts is Caroline: It’s her name Echo whispers, after being wiped. It’s the name she should not know or remember, but does anyway.

Random notes:

About two minutes into enjoying the company of “Crystal”, Alpha is probably questioning his choice of imprint.

And yes, Fred is my favourite character in “Angel”. OF COURSE SHE IS.

I love how the client of the wacky serial killer fantasy just sits alone sobbing at the end. The real world, dude.

“When does the hankering for tasty brains kick in? These people are zombies.” Not yet, Caroline, not yet. But very soon, their full Reavery potential shall be realized.

Also, note that Alpha first saw her as Caroline, not as Echo.

Ballard: “So this is it. This is where you steal their souls.”
Topher: “Yeah. And then we put them in a glass jar with our fireflies. Why is there a tall, morally judgemental man in my imprint room beside him [Boyd]?`”

WATCH YOUR STEP. Okay.

The fact that November and Sierra as bounty hunters ended up cut makes me infinitely sad. “If you’re done molesting the furniture, can we get these guys?” SPIN-OFF, ANYONE?

“Oh god, the wrongness of this is so large.” Or, as I would like to call it, reasons why viewers will always tend to prefer Echo over Caroline.

“Right. Why would I want to live in a luxurious spa-like environment when I could live with you.” File under: Accurate description of the Dollhouse. 

Echo touches Topher’s heart, literally: Topher, who is the Tinwood Man, in search for a heart. And he will, eventually, find it.

Dollhouse - I remember everything about you.

Dollhous: 1x11 Briar Rose.

Fairy Tales

So much about the Dollhouse is a fairy tale. There is the promise itself: fall asleep for a couple of years, wake up new and free with all your burdens gone, a liberated person. There is Paul, quite literally trying to become the prince to liberate Caroline from her castle and her sleep. All the more fitting that the finale of the first season is a fairy tale with a twist at the end.

The fairy tale in “Briar Rose” is a story Echo reads to a group of children in the beginning, the story of the princess who fell asleep for a hundred years only to be woken up on the last day of the sleep by a prince. The engagement itself is unlikely – it’s a charitable cause (“Everybody wants to be righteous when they can afford it”), with Echo having an imprint of one traumatized little girl, an imprint that is the best case scenario for someone with that kind of terrible childhood. This is the first time that Ivy respects Topher, when she realizes how much thought he has put into this – and we realize, at the same time, that this is why Topher is working for the Dollhouse, even though he wouldn’t admit it, and he is crestfallen when his next job is to resurrect Dominic’s imprint.

Echo has the same memories Susan has – of abuse, of being trapped in an impossible situation – but the way she talks about not being able to escape is exactly how we would expect Echo to describe her situation. Echo made someone help too: she called Ballard, when he was almost willing to give up his search for her. Echo recruited her prince, but she doesn’t know yet that already recruited one earlier, on the very first day she entered the Dollhouse (still Caroline) when she wasn’t even conscious yet.  

Susan: “You can always run away.”

Echo: “Really? I couldn’t.”

Susan: “When did you wanna run away?”

Echo: “In the middle of the night. It always seemed like I could run away when it would get light. Sometimes I’d get dressed and lie there, waiting for the sun. But when it came up he’d be there, pretending things were normal, and it seemed so much better to just pretend, you know? It seemed like I’d imagined all the other stuff and I really wanted all of that something I had imagined, and I ended up feeling like I was just as guilty as he was, like it was a crime we were committing together, and every time someone calls me a victim, I feel like I’m the biggest liar in the world.”

[…]

Susan: “Four times I saw a way to go, and I didn’t go.”

Echo: “You couldn’t have gotten away. He was bigger and stronger and older. It’s okay. It’s okay to get rescued by someone else if you’re young, or small, or if you just can’t do it yourself. Hey, you know this story? Read it again, okay. But this time, think of yourself as the prince.”

Susan: “I didn’t save anyone.”

Echo: “Hey, remember what you said: “The Prince shows up at the last minute and takes all the credit.” That means Briar Rose was trapped all that time sleeping, and dreaming of getting out. The Prince was her dream. She made him. She made him fight to get her out.”

Susan: “But the Prince was a boy.”

Echo: “Yeah. But that’s not his fault.”

The knights in shining armour

Paul’s actions in this episode are particularly dislikeable, although he somewhat redeems himself in the next one. He breaks up with Mellie, expecting that this will eventually lead him to the Dollhouse. It’s hard to tell whether he realizes the impact this has on Mellie, whose entire existence is based on him – it isn’t in her programming to ever get over him, and she is considering suicide before her handler picks her up.

Paul ends up seeing the Dollhouse from the outside; where it is only an inconspicuous office building, and he realizes that it really must be underground. The way he talks about Mellie after deciding that she is only useful for finding the Dollhouse reveals one of his biggest flaws:

Loomis: “Your neighbour? The one with the fingerprints? You’re certain now that she is…”

Ballard: “A doll.”

Loomis: “Well, I was gonna say a victim.”

Mellie is now nothing but a doll, a tool he uses to his advantage (and he also feels used by her, even though it isn’t her fault). Caroline remains the princess that must be saved. Paul isn’t really trying to “Free the dolls”, he is trying to rescue the one person whose face has been stuck in his head ever he first saw a picture of her. Later, Stephen/Alpha even asks him if he is going to save Mellie, and Paul responds: “No. She told me herself she can’t be trusted. She warned me. After I get Caroline out I can come back.”

Of course it must have been a deliberate choice to cast the one person in the role of Alpha that a good part of the “Dollhouse”-viewers still sees as the loving, quirky, nerdy, “semi-muscular” and incredibly brave Wash from “Firefly”. Paul’s first encounter with Stephen Kepler, the environmental designer who created the closed systems that make the Dollhouse independent from the outside world, plays into our expectations: he is a neurotic shut-in, afraid of the terrible world outside, experimenting with his own urine.

Stephen is the ridiculous part of the buddy-cop-movie vehicle. He is the angsty guy afraid of guns, unwilling to go down the rabbit hole (literally, the only way into the Dollhouse is a hole in the ground) with Paul, so that we perceive it as the Prince entering along with his sidekick rather than two potential knights in shiny armour with entirely different motives for their actions. They enter just as Echo wakes up in her pod, and it is hard to deny that the t-shirt they steal from an Active fits him a little bit too well.

Ballard: “This is a bad place.”

Stephen: “Bad people maybe, good place. This is the future. The machine feeds them what they need; the machine takes away what it needs. It is a closed system, the earth is not harmed. We are all cells in a body.”

Ballard: “Cells in a body? That’s the future. We’re all functional, interchangeable.”

Stephen: “We already are, man. What, you didn’t know that? I was trying to tell you. We’re all just atoms in the big continuous universe and the best... the best we can do is try not to kill it from the inside.”

Ballard: “No, there’s more we can do.”

The scene in which Ballard first finds Caroline, the sleeping beauty, in her pod, plays out just like the fairy tale. He says “Caroline”, she abidingly opens her eyes although she shouldn’t respond to that name. But then, the other man in her life, the one she trusts more than anybody else (and, as we’ve seen before, it is more than just programming, their connection has evolved), breaks the spell: “Sorry, Agent Ballard. You don’t get the girl.”

Stephen, meanwhile, follows his own agenda, avoiding to be seen by those who might recognize his true identity, until finally, we see who he is on Claire Saunders’ face, right before he slashes up Victor’s. His interrogation of her is cruel, as if he is trying to find traces of her sentience and finds it utterly amusing when he doesn’t.

Alpha: “Have you always wanted to be a doctor? It’s a simple question. Answer now.”

Claire: “Yes.”

Alpha: “That’s a lie. Let’s try another. Tell me about the first time we met.”

Claire: “You were new. You signed the agreement and they just… you’d just been wiped for the first time. Your handler brought you in for an exam.”

Alpha: “And, did you examine me? My whole body?”

Claire: “Yes.”

Alpha: “And was I fine, healthy, intact?”

Claire: “Yes.”

Alpha: “This is so interesting. I wish we had more time.”

Claire: “We don’t have time?”

Adelle’s first confrontation with Paul is equally stunning: She laughs at his sense of righteousness, at his naivety.

Adelle: “Did you really think you could just walk into the Dollhouse, when everyone knows it doesn’t exist? “

[…]

Ballard: There is no provision for consensual slavery. It is wrong. You know it’s wrong. You feel it in your bones. What you did to Caroline is wrong.”

Adelle: “You know so many things but their names. […] Alpha isn’t in Tucson…”

My prince

Alpha: “Echo.”

Echo: “Oh. I know you. I remember something about you.”

Alpha: “I remember everything about you.”

And then Alpha puts Echo into the chair and imprints her.

Echo: “Oh, I know you!”

Alpha: “Of course you do.”

Echo: “My prince!”

And thusly, the knight saves the princess from her sleep and triumphantly walks out of the castle with her.

Random thoughts:

The fade-over when Ballard first sees the building under which the Dollhouse lies, to the castle in the book of fairy tales, is brilliant.

When Susan “fixes” the tales, it always reminds me of River fixing the bible. “Noah’s Ark is a problem. We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon.”

Within one episode, the whole idea of putting the identity of an existing person into the body of an Active turns from an entertaining murder-mystery into a horror-movie scenario. This is also the first time that we see how perfect Enver Gjokaj is when he is playing someone else’s character (the moment when Dominic cries out for “Whiskey”, and Claire interprets it as a plight for something to help him deal, is still one of my favourites in this episode).

“Medicinal carrots.”

“Earth is gonna have a people day”

Alan Tudyk doesn’t look “semi”-muscular to me.

After Boyd stops Ballard, the only line in my recap is “And then they commence their manly fighting”.

Dollhouse - They still won’t see it coming.

Dollhouse: 1x09 A Spy in the House of Love.

Considering what a massive secret the Dollhouse is, it’s quite remarkable how open the building itself is: there are doors that people do not close, even though they have important conversations. There are glass panes where you’d expect a solid wall. All of this, because the non-Actives feel safe and sound with the knowledge that the Actives they are responsible for are not able to comprehend what is going on anyway: just that one Active is, and the biggest achievement of “A Spy in the House of Love” is to show just how perceptive Echo has become, and how well she can put the pieces she picks up as she wanders around together.

The bit at the beginning, when Victor is taken to his Lonelyhearts-engagement and meets Echo on her way home in a S&M-costume, provides for an interesting bit of conversation between her and Boyd:

Echo: “You can trust me. I’ve already shown that I trust you. I got in the van, didn’t I?”
Boyd: “You sure that was a wise decision?”
Echo: “I’ve got a good feeling about you. And I’ve got the whip.”

The relationship between handler and active is based on power and trust, and it is the very basis for everything that happens in the Dollhouse. Topher imprints assassins and killers whose abilities would make them impossible to control, if it wasn’t for the call-and-response. At the very ending of the episode, when Boyd takes over Dominic’s position unwillingly and Echo gets a new handler, there is the slightest indication that Echo realizes what is happening. She looks at Boyd as she repeats the script, conscious of a kind of betrayal on his part.

November / Mellie

“I can’t sleep. The only thing I think about is finding this place, and sometimes I don’t even know why I’m after it anymore.”

“A Spy in the House of Love” works like a puzzle: each of the imprints has their own story, and in the end, it all comes together somehow. As Mellie, November contrasts perfectly with Ballard, who is slowly descending into madness after Echo contacted him. Mellie is the one thing in his life that still connects him to a reality outside the Dollhouse – and in the precise moment when he tries to embrace that, he finds out the truth about her.

November: “I have a message for you from inside the Dollhouse. My name is November. We knew this would be hard for you to hear. This body belongs to a doll. I’m sorry we had to deliver the news to you like this, in this body. The Dollhouse has likely discovered that we’ve been putting messages in their imprints. This is the only way we could get the message to you. They did this to you. They did this long before you met me. They’ve been using this body to spy on you for months. They only reason Mellie exists is because of you. […] You need to investigate why it exists. The dollhouse deals in fantasy, but that is not their purpose. Investigate their purpose.”

So the thing Joel said to Ballard in “The Man on the Street” is quite literally true: he is a client of the Dollhouse unknowingly, and he has, in a way, used her exactly the same way clients use the Actives. Even more shockingly, he seems to struggle at first when he has to pretend like everything is normal, but eventually, he lets all her frustration out on Mellie and REALLY uses her, which is probably one of the reasons why I viewed everything he did after this episode as essentially flawed and potentially harmful to Echo. I actually enjoy that his idea of being the knight in shining armour gets taken apart and perverted completely in the final two episodes (not counting “Epitaph One” as a regular episode).

Sierra

Sierra’s story is a perfect exercise in the spy genre – Dominic sends her into the NSA to retrieve the name of the informant inside the Dollhouse.

Victor/Roger, Adelle
And suddenly Adelle, the great enigma of the show so far, the woman who never lets her guard down, unless forced to do so by substances, turns out to be a client of her own house. She is not only in the business of giving people what they need (and apparently her understanding that it isn’t about wants, but needs, comes from her own experience), but also of keeping secrets, so it would be almost impossible for her to have a functioning relationship outside the Dollhouse. Roger knows everything about the Dollhouse. Even more so, he understands it because she has imprinted him with her understanding of it.

Adelle: “I used to head a division that grew replacement organs out of stem cells. I could tell people what I did for a living.”
Roger: “You’ve told me what you do. Isn’t it just helping lonely people?”
Adelle: “Pathetic, self-deluding souls.”

This might in fact be my favourite part of the episode because it is the first time, apart from maybe Joel, that we are really meant to understand the motivations of clients who use the Dollhouse.

Adelle: “I’m not suggesting you become a client. In fact the universe might collapse under that one.”
Roger: “Good. Cause I don’t want an ersatz that’s you. I want the real you.”
Adelle: “And I want the real you. It’s ironic that sometimes I think you’re the most real person I’ve ever met.”
Roger: “That’s not irony. No one gets that right.”
Adelle: “With you, there is no reason to hide anything real.”
[…]
Adelle: “You aren’t…”
Roger: “I’m not who you need?”
Adelle: “Oh no. You’re exactly who I need. We just can’t have that. You have to trust me.”
Roger: “I do. I trust you. Completely.”

The authenticity of emotion will be a bigger issue in the coming season, but it already dealt with here. Is Adelle more “real” when she is with Roger? Can she only trust people she knows she controls completely? Her breaking point in the second season comes when she discovers that Victor’s lingering feelings for Sierra also carry over to Roger – that Roger isn’t entirely hers anymore, that she has lost grip of that last thing that she thought she controlled.

Claire

Even before it was revealed that Topher created Claire to act as a counterpoint to himself, she fulfilled that function. She doesn’t just argue against Topher; it’s even more intriguing to see her with Boyd, since they seem to share the same basic idea about keeping the actives safe and having moral doubts about what the Dollhouse is doing (again, assuming that Boyd was decided to be the Big Bad after these episodes were shot), but the actions that come from this conviction are radically different.

Boyd: “You really think it has anything to do with need?”
Claire: “Sometimes yes. Having a desire you’re afraid or ashamed of expressing can be terribly debilitating.”
[…]
Claire: “I believe the system’s flawed. Maybe irreparably. But maybe not for the same reasons you do.”

This episode also reveals that Claire never has never left the Dollhouse since Alpha attacked her, that she lives there and fears the outside world, although Echo’s questioning ends before the obvious conclusion becomes inevitable.

Echo / Dominic / Adelle

Echo goes from realizing that something is not okay (“everyone’s unhappy today”), to following her first instinct of wanting to help (“why wouldn’t I”), and finally to the realization that must scare Topher the most: That Topher controls the chair, and can therefore make her help, even if she can’t in her present state (“you make people different. You can make me help.”)

The reveal that Dominic wasn’t working to bring down the Dollhouse, but to prevent Adelle from making mistakes, already indicates that there is a power struggle about who is going to control the Dollhouse in the future, and who is going to decide what the “purpose” of the Dollhouse really is. Dominic considers Echo a threat to the security of the Dollhouse because anything out of the ordinary is potentially dangerous, and he is remarkably prescient about what is going to happen (“Do you know what the world will be like when Rossum lets the Dollhouse slip from its grasp? The technology needs to be reined in and controlled!”). For Echo, on the other hand, beating Dominic, winning against him in a fight, is essential to assert her identity (“I’m not broken”, she says, as she dangles him out of the window by his feet).
It is also fascinating how the episode re-introduces the Attic again as this kind of bogeyman to keep the children in check: “It’s a mental suck. You know that feeling you get when a name is on the tip of your tongue but you can’t say it, it’s like that, but with every thought you never have.”

The conflict in the end shows us Adelle after she realized that she let the control of the Dollhouse slip – she reasserts herself, and becomes even more dangerous because she is threatened. Dominic is right when he calls her “naïve” about the mission of the Dollhouse – if anything, Adelle’s realization about what is going to happen comes way too late in the second season – but at this point, she still is the one calling the shots, and she doesn’t even hesitate to put Mr Dominic into the attic. It’s not explicit, but she feels personally hurt for trusting someone who was playing her (“What? Did you think I'd show you mercy? Or rage? Three years by my side. I think you'd know me better than that.”).

Echo: “What’s in store for you, you don’t have much to smile about.”
Dominic: “After you beat me to a pulp they’re gonna erase me, but at first they’re gonna erase you.”
Echo: “I can take care of myself.”
Dominic: “I know. That’s why I’m smiling. Cause one day you’ll be erasing them, and even after all this, they still won’t see it coming. Sooner or later everybody gets there’s.”

The scene this episode started with, the brutal moment in which all the pretence of harmony and comfort and the wonderful tabula rasa falls away to reveal that the chair is a device out of a horror movie, is a decisive moment for many characters. Wiping Dominic’s memory and putting him into the attic is probably the first time that we see Topher questioning the Dollhouse. Adelle remains strong on the outside and even stays after Dominic shoots her, seemingly unfazed, but she shows a bit of her vulnerability to Topher afterwards (“how did I not see this coming”) and even more so, to Claire when she patches her up. She tells Topher to “shelve” Roger (a resolution we now know didn’t last too long) because Ms Lonelyhearts “realized the indiscretion was unwise”. She also indicates that she considers Echo a potential asset after she “took out her biggest threat” and “she's the one taking care of us”.

Claire: “I know you were close to Mr. Dominic.”
Adelle: “He was an employee with whom I worked closely. There's a difference.”
Claire: “It's OK to feel something.”
Adelle: “That would imply I'd lost something.”
Claire: “Didn't you?”
Adelle: Nothing I can't live without.

This is an interesting scene because once again, Adelle speaks openly to a doll, even though it is a thinly veiled conversation about Roger rather than Dominic. I am always surprised by how intimate this interaction is

Random notes:

Miracle Laurie’s acting in this episode is perfect.

“Someone is a Grumpeteer today”. Not only is Topher’s description of Dominic surprisingly accurate, it also provides for the perfect image whenever I watch Angel do his thing. 

When Echo the spy hunter interviews everybody in the Dollhouse, I always feel reminded of when the Watchers came to question Buffy’s friend and it all went terribly wrong. Boyd says: “We’re pimps and killers, but in a philanthropic way.” Ivy says: “I probably know enough about the imprint equipment to rip it down and reassemble it without Topher ever knowing. Well that didn’t sound good, did it?”

Dollhouse – Freedom has to be earned.

Dollhouse: 1x08 Needs.

“Echoes” and “Needs” could almost be the first two-parter of “Dollhouse”. This episode does not resolve any of the new conflicts from “Echoes”, but it builds on them. It also follows the strategy to break the usual format – last episode, we saw the Actives (and the non-Actives) under the influence of a drug that worked differently on both of them, reactivating memories in the Actives, removing inhibitions from those without the Architecture. This episode, we see who Echo, Victor, November and Sierra were before, but without their memories. It’s an interesting experience, especially with November and Sierra: we haven’t really seen them yet, and the person November becomes is so incredibly different from the lovely Mellie. It’s hard to admit that the Actives are easier to like than the real people they used to be, but maybe that’s also one of the points “Dollhouse” makes: human beings with all their contradictions and flaws are more difficult to like than programmed Actives.
After “Needs” aired there was a very vivid discussion of whether “Dollhouse” was making it too easy for the viewers, making things explicit that an active and engaged viewer could also understand without being told. Paul’s dream ties in perfectly with what Joel told him in “Man on the Street” and what Mellie accused him of before leaving: he is obsessed with someone who might not even exist. He dreams about Caroline coming to his door and seducing him (“I’m not a client. I don’t need that.”), giving him permission by saying the magic words (“Save me Paul”). In the back of his mind, the story about the brave knight who ends up getting the girl because he haves her, is true, and he feels guilty about it (on cue, Mellie comes in, and in the end, he can’t save either of them).

“This house is out of balance.”

This is the first time that Adelle addresses the recent problems to the staff of the Dollhouse, and the following discussion reveals how each of the main characters that aren’t Actives (and one who is one, but we don’t know that yet) feel about the people they are responsible for. Adelle must think about the bigger picture, of course. I had a very hard time rooting for Mr Dominic in “The Attic” after this episode:

Dominic: “It’s easy to become to your assigned Active, in fact it’s necessary. Don’t think of them as children, think of them as pets.”
Claire: “Is that supposed to be funny?”
Dominic: “If your child starts talking for the first time, you feel proud. If your dog does, you freak the hell out. Any developmental progress any Active makes is dangerous to the house, and a possible first step towards the next Alpha.”

We perceive that there is an essential divide between two different approaches here, and Dominic and Topher are one side, while Boyd and Claire are on the other. Boyd (still first season Boyd, not yet meant to be the Big Bad) thinks only of Echo and her well-being, and Adelle’s response to his doubts is “In here we protect the house. A tide is rising, and until we learn how to turn it back we pile up the sandbags together.” Topher wants to meddle to fix things, and Claire reminds him that he might be over-estimating his own abilities again.

Topher: “I know what I’m doing, Doc.”
Claire: “So do I. You should also care what you’re doing to our pets.”

Claire Saunders was created for this argument, but at this point, it worked to showcase how uncaring Topher is (and we’ve seen him fail before, we’ve seen what happens when he overestimates what he can actually do).

Closure
The first sentence each of the Actives speak after waking up with their personalities in place, but their memories still gone, is about the one thing that they can’t get over. Some things persist and cannot be erased. Anthony knows that he remembers Priya, but not how and why. Caroline says “I think I have to get to the mountains. Everything’s okay there.” – and it is only later that she realizes that saving others is more important to her than to be safe. Madeline says “I lost something. Maybe it’s here somewhere.” (the tragic thing being that the only thing that is still retrievable is the memory, which is indeed here, somewhere, stored on a wedge). We understand everything through our particular frame of reference, and now we are trying to reconstruct who they were before. Anthony was a soldier. Caroline used to think of others. Madeline is the one person in the group who asked to become an Active – and she says “Maybe something bad happened to us and they’re helping us heal”.

Caroline is the only one taken to Claire (“I’m not your friend in here, Echo. I’m sorry, I can’t help you”) – and her reaction to her is incredibly foreshadowing (“I think she’s a prisoner. Like us.”).

In retrospect, the most interesting fact about the episode is that it really doesn’t resolve anything. It is supposed to bring closure, but in fact, “Dollhouse” returns to all of these issues later. Anthony and Priya do confront Nolan, but she later has to return to her promise that she will be back and really punish him. Madeline finds her daughter’s grave and grieves, but when we see her after her contract runs out, she clearly hasn’t moved on, and is still an incredibly sad and depressed character (possibly the most tragic one in the show). Anthony is still eternally in love with Priya (or rather, Victor is still in love with Sierra, and this gets complicated once they become Anthony and Priya again). Caroline’s decision to stay behind as the others are leaving the Dollhouse (“trying to make a difference”) is also the one thing Adelle did not see coming: As she watches everybody leave, she assumes Caroline is gone too, and is thoroughly surprised when she manages to turn off the power and attempts to free everybody.

Adelle: “I should have seen this coming. This is Caroline minus the memories, but it’s her, and it’s exactly what Caroline would do.”

It’s an empty promise again, the grand gesture: Walking outside, into the light, with the Actives that she thinks she is freeing around her – and just like that, it ends, and she falls asleep. It’s a powerful image, just as the idea of freeing Caroline is an incredibly powerful fantasy for Ballard. The ending of “Epitaph Two” references this scene, with the difference that the world outside that Adelle leads the Actives to is a former battlefield, the remains of civilization after the apocalypse.

Manipulation
“Dollhouse” is about information: interpreting it, removing it, withholding it, and how memories or the lack of it shape an identity. The viewer is also a part of this: sometimes, the show decides to withhold necessary information from us. It’s a basic instrument for good storytelling, the idea that the narrator is not necessarily reliable. The exact same mechanism of only showing one part of a conversation and leaving out the necessary ending that changes the meaning of everything we’ve seen is later used in “The Attic”. We see the Actives wake up and think it is some kind of flaw in the system that returned them to their original state, and just as we think that they might go free, that they might be able to save themselves, we see that Adelle and Dominic are always watching, that they are expecting every little step on the way (“Right on schedule.”).

The devil that you know is better than the one you don’t.

Adelle: “…unless anyone here thinks they’ve got a better idea.”
Claire: “We give them what they need.”
Adelle: “Doctor Saunders?”
Claire: “Closure. If Actives have particularly poignant or reoccurring experiences, these can cause desires, emotional needs or reactivate old ones that existed before they came here. Open loops. If they’re able to close these loops to get some sense of resolve. Let the tide come in. It’s the only way to wash it back out.”

It’s also in Claire’s programming to fear the world outside, to fear the chaos and potential dangers, because without these phobias, she would not stay in the Dollhouse. Claire feels responsible for all the Actives, and she can not imagine that they would be safe with the freedom that Caroline believes she gives them.

Boyd: “When Echo was leading them out, I would like to have seen that. Even if it was all a game. Your game.”
Claire: “Do you think I had fun?”
Boyd: “I don’t know you very well.”
Claire: “You have to look after Echo, I have to look after all of them. She wasn’t leading them to freedom, she was leading them to a world of terror and chaos that would have destroyed them.”
Boyd: “She isn’t leading them anywhere anymore.”
Claire: “You should be grateful.”
Boyd: “Yeah. I’ll work on that.”

Random notes:

I once had the idea of comparing “La Femme Nikita” (the tv show, not the film by Luc Besson) with “Dollhouse” but failed because it’s such a long series that had a lot of ideas, but never really elaborated on them (in a way, it’s the opposite of the rushed and incredibly condensed ending that is the second part of the second season) – but it really took me eight episodes to realize that Adelle’s office is overlooking the Dollhouse in exactly the same way Operations and Madeline were always watching Section, behind a glass window and above everybody else.

Active Mike = The Red Shirt of the Dollhouse.

Active: “I like pancakes.”
Anthony: “We’re all gonna die.”

In the very end, Ballard listens to a message Caroline must have left him while she was rogue, in which she tells him that they are “underground” – the necessary piece of information he needs to find the man who designed the Dollhouse.

Dollhouse – I’m going to make you an offer.

Dollhouse: 1x07 Echoes.

The titular sentence of this episode – “I’m going to make you an offer” – stands for everything the Dollhouse pretends to be. It’s Adelle’s justification for what she is doing. It is the pretence of a choice, of a required consent to what happens to the Actives. In the beginning of the episode, we see more of the scene that started the show, Adelle talking to Caroline, in a situation where she is the one making the rules, where Adelle is the one with all the power. In “Echoes”, we learn a bit more about how she ended up there (the second part of that story is told in “Getting Closer”). Adelle needs this more than Caroline because she functions in this environment only if she believes that what they are doing is not completely wrong, morally (I firmly believe that her disgust with Nolan in “Belonging” is  honest and heartfelt).

Adelle: “I’m going to make you an offer.”
Caroline: “I told you all I wanted was to be left alone.”
Adelle: “We both know we’re past that.”
[…]
Adelle: “My offer is this. Your life for your life. I get five years, you get the rest. You’d be free.”
Caroline: “Is that you talking, or the Rossum Corporation? Why me, why did you pick me?”
Adelle: “Caroline, you picked us. This is a good thing, Caroline.”
Caroline: “I know what I saw. What started this.”
Adelle: “You and I have been doing this dance for almost two years. I thought you’d have learned by now: nothing what it appears to be. “

The promise of freedom is just as empty as the promise that a clean slate is possible. We know now that the man in the suit upstairs has ordered Adelle to bring in Caroline at all costs, and that there is no alternative to her joining the Dollhouse because she has been made out to be the future, the saviour.

It’s significant that this episode also offers an insight into Adelle’s reasoning when she is less inhibited because of the drugs.

Adelle: “We make choices. I’m well aware there are forces beyond our control but even in the face of those forces we make choices, and then we live with them. And then we die with them. I know why Echo went to Freemont.”
Topher: “To punish you?”
Adelle: “To let Caroline punish me.”

“In my dream, I’m stronger than you know.”

It’s interesting how early into the show Ballard’s role as the hero of the story was so thoroughly deconstructed. He tries taking care of Mellie, now that he is unemployed and she still suffers shock from having been attacked (and subsequently killed the man who did attack her), but this doesn’t go as far as losing sight of his one and only aim in life, which is bringing down the Dollhouse and rescuing the princess. I suppose we are still meant to cheer him on at this point, especially since we read Mellie’s attempts to stop him not as concern, but as her programming, but it is still difficult to like a character that is so single-minded (I have the same issues with Caroline in this episode and until the end of the show). Mellie is equally single-minded, but in her case it’s the programming. We see how frustrating it must be to be programmed to feel this way about somebody, and then witness how Paul is still obsessing about Caroline (“Are you ever gonna shut up about her? Is she what you think about while you’re on me? Would you let me die Paul, would you be relieved? Ow.” – is the first thing she says in the Dollhouse, once the drugs start having an effect on the dolls as well)

“I have to go. I have to help him.”

“Man on the Street” is also a turning point in the show because from now on, the focus is not on how Echo retains information that should be gone after her treatment: it’s the fact that Caroline’s character trait of wanting to help everybody at all costs is something she instinctually has to fulfil as well. When she sees what is happening on the College campus that Caroline, incidentally, also went to, she knows that she has to help, although she no clear memories of why, and the biography of her imprint does not match her instincts. When Boyd follows her there, not knowing that he is putting himself in danger because everybody who isn’t an Active is influenced by the escaped drug, her instinct to help even overwrites what we are meant to believe is her most basic programming. He asks her if she wants her treatment, and she breaks the script and says “no”.

The interesting concept behind making everybody who isn’t an Active into a potential target for the drug, and therefore helpless and dependent on the Actives, is the role-reversal. Eventually, those with the Active Architecture will again be the saviours of humanity, and this is just a little insight into that possibility (also, the Dolls are also affected by the drug: they remember their most traumatic memories which they shouldn’t even have, and we find out that Victor used to be a soldier). It’s also an interesting idea to have this episode right after Mellie was revealed to be an Active, because it basically ends some speculation about who else might be one: We see Boyd, Topher, Dominic and Adelle affected – but Claire is mysteriously absent from the episode…

Essentially, the traumas that the people in this episode can not get over or forget are what makes them who they are. Sierra and Priya will struggle with the rape for the rest of the series. Victor / Anthony will always be a soldier. Echo will always have Caroline’s instinct to help the helpless – Echo’s story parallels the events that lead to Caroline sitting in this room, opposite Adelle, making a choice that isn’t really one. In the end, Adelle is recruiting again:

Adelle: “I'm someone who can give you what you want.”
Sam: “And what do I want?”
Adelle: “A new life. A better life.”
Adelle: “Your mother, Antoinette Jennings of 483 Helena Street. I understand she's experiencing some financial difficulties. In fact, she's about to lose her home.”
Sam: “Do not threaten my mother.”
Adelle: “Quite the opposite.”
Adelle: “Once you sign these papers, your mother will begin receiving a monthly stipend large enough to solve her financial problems. It will continue for five years, and at the end of that time, you will be quite capable of supporting her all on your own.”
Sam: “How?”
Adelle: “I'm going to make you an offer.”

Random notes:

This is the first time that we see Ambrose. Topher’s reaction: “I might throw up. That’s a compliment.” Adelle’s is different:

Adelle: “The Rossum Corporation is why we exist and I believe in the work we’re funding. I also believe that the only reason why I don’t have Clive Ambrose’s jobs is because he couldn’t handle mine.”

Of course Topher would give Victor an imprint that outranks Mr. Dominic’s just for the fun of it.

Topher and Adelle “under the influence” are comic gold. Joss always uses some kind of excuse to bring out the most ridiculous sides of his most sober characters (Giles and Joyce in “Band Candy”, the new and improved Wesley in “Spinning the Bottle”), and who could be better suited than Adelle DeWitt.

Adelle: “Are you making any progress?”
Topher: “I'm working! What are you doing, besides ... being ...”
Adelle: “Being what?”
Topher: “Wait a minute.”
Adelle: “Sarcastic? Unfeeling? British?”
Topher: “It's an animal.”
Adelle: “Where?”
Topher: “No! The word!”
Adelle: “Still you have to admit I am very British. I don't say hard ... Rs.”
Topher: “You know what I like? Brown Sauce? What's it made of? Science doesn't know!”
Adelle: “It's made of brown.”
Topher: “Brown...mined from the earth by the hard scrabble brown miners of north Brownderton!”
Adelle: “Oh my god, I find lentils completely incomprehensible.”
[…]
Topher: “Our problems are huge and indomitable.”
Adelle: “Oh, I could eat that word. Or a crisp. Do you have any crisps?”
Topher: “You haven't seen my drawer of inappropriate starches?”
Adelle: “Oh my god, I’m having such a terrible day.”

I also love that they decided to go back to Topher’s trampoline in this episode (and Adelle is using it) – and the looks of complete awe at the beauty of Boyd’s piano song is something to behold.

It’s sad that we didn’t get to see more of Dominic. I still find it difficult to reconcile the person we see in season one with the Dominic that is later stuck in the attic – but at least he gets a bit of redemption by making a complete fool of himself here.

Mr. Dominic: “I’m so sorry I tried to kill you.”
Echo: “It’s okay.”
Mr. Dominic: “No, it’s not okay. I tried to burn you to death. Who does that?”

Echo’s response, by the way, was incredibly reminiscent of “Buffy”, but I couldn’t find out from which episode. Eventually I’ll watch the show again. (Oh: In “Angel”, “Hey, no big. Water... over the bridge, under the  bridge...”

“You know. Water. Bridge. Under.”

Dollhouse - And we will be over. As a species. We will cease to matter

Dollhouse: 1x06 Man on the Street.

The question of how the technology that is the premise of “Dollhouse” shapes and changes society has been in the background of the show so far. The episodes leading up to “Man on the Street” were about Echo’s self-realization, about the question of whether the promise of a tabula rasa is real or not. “Man on the Street” starts outside the confines of the Dollhouse, on the streets of LA where the reality we’ve been confronted with is nothing but an urban legend. How people react to the potential of that urban legend being true reveals a lot about society. The reactions range from “where is the dotted line” at the promise of money and partying with rich people without remembering anything to the compelling conclusion that :

“Oh it’s happening. If there is one things people will always need it’s slaves. […] There's only one reason why someone would volunteer to be a slave, and that's that he is one already.”

, which mirrors what Echo, after Alpha’s intervention, is going to tell the original copy of Caroline (“I have thirty-eight brains. Not one of them thinks you can sign a contract to be a slave.”)

Ballard / Caroline

There is a progression in this episode: in the beginning, Ballard watches that video he received of Caroline on campus. Later, we will find out that the seemingly innocent girl was already involved with a terrorist cell, but in Ballard’s head, she is the personified evil of the Dollhouse, robbing an innocent woman of her identity. He can’t put a face to the Dollhouse, but through the items he receives, he has a very clear image of the victims in his head. Ballard isn’t introspective enough to realize that this very mechanism, of casting Caroline as the damsel in distress, he is doing exactly the same thing the clients of the Dollhouse do with the Actives. He casts her in his fantasy of himself as the knight in shiny armour, and it takes one of the hated clients of the Dollhouse to point that out to him.
It starts in a conversation with Mellie.

Ballard: “That’s one more tiny step closer to bringing her in.”
Mellie: “Them.”
Ballard: “What?”
Mellie: “Bringing them in. You said her.”

One of the many twists in this episode is that Paul has such a clear picture in his head of what a client of the Dollhouse is going to be like, and then Joel tells him the story of how he lost his wife and this is his way of coping with it. Paul never comes close to grasping what the Dollhouse is, not even when he starts working for it, and he only comprehends Echo’s complexity after he has the architecture installed himself, but this is a first glimpse into the concept that the world isn’t black and white. For Ballard, everything that’s happening in this episode is a box in a box in a box (although he won’t really notice until he finds out what Mellie is) – but we do, and it casts him in a new light, it destroys what has been a fairly conventional structure so far (good cop pursues morally bankrupt evil-doers with limited resources).

Ballard: “What’s her name?”
Joel: “Rebecca. She told you.”
Ballard: “Really. How do you know Rebecca?”
Joel: “We’ve been married for seven years.”
Ballard: “So that’s your fantasy. All the money in the world, the most elaborate high class underground operation ever designed and you just want to play house. I guess the rich really are different.”
Joel: “Why? What’s your fantasy?”
Ballard: “Oh I’m okay right here in the real world, thanks.”
Joel: "You have a fantasy ok?. We all do. We need it to survive. And I think your fantasy is about my Rebecca.”
Ballard: “Her name is Caroline. […] A few years ago she was a student and then she had her identity ripped from her so she could play love slave to every little loser with a wad of cash.”
Joel: “…Then the brave little FBI agent whisked her away from the cash-wielding losers and restored her true identity, and she fell in love with him. […] I mean, she, she changed things for you. So you’re the head of this FBI task force to uncover the Dollhouse, and you’re working hard, you’re chasing leads, you’re cracking skulls, but it’s just work. And then you meet this girl or you… you see her somewhere, huh? Caroline? And suddenly it gets personal. Tell me you haven’t thought about it. You know, her, her grateful tears, her, her welcoming embrace, her warm breath. Are you married?
Ballard: “Was.”
Joel: “Oh, that’s… Is there someone in your life right now?”
Ballard: “This is getting old.”
Joel: “Of course not. No, there’s no room for a real girl, is there, when you can feel Caroline beckoning? You know, I have to say I-I think your fantasy is even sadder than mine.”
[…]
Ballard: “This is all going to come apart. You might not be punished and I might not be alive, but this house will fall.”
Joel: “The first hurdle in my business is the people who will not accept the change that’s already happened. Go. Go live in your real world. If you ever did.”

“Dollhouse” is going to spend the first half of the second season to drive home the point that Echo isn’t Caroline anymore. The person Ballard has in mind when he says “Caroline” does not correspond with any reality, it’s a construct just as much as Echo performing as Rebecca is (with the difference that Echo believes in that second construct).

The scene in which Ballard comes home after hearing all of this, and it has left marks, is also all about interpretation and attribution. We see Mellie, the good-hearted neighbour, who has obviously been pining for Paul all this time, and finally, she gets what she wants. We see Paul, who has just been told that the fact that he doesn’t have a girlfriend shows that he isn’t any better than a client of the Dollhouse, trying everything to prove Joel wrong. The reveal that Mellie is a doll and therefore Paul has done exactly what he was trying to avoid by sleeping with her, works so well because it completely destroys our expectations. At the same time, OF COURSE Mellie is a doll, how couldn’t she be. She spent most of her days waiting for Paul to get home, but there are so many romantic movies that use this old plot, the plain-looking girl pining for the hero and finally succeeding, that this single-mindedness doesn’t even appear strange anymore.

Paul gets what he wanted for years now in this episode; and at the same time, everything is taken away from him with the same breath. Someone meddles with Topher’s imprint of Echo and makes her a messenger, but she also follows her original purpose of having Ballard lose his job.

Echo: “The Dollhouse is real. They know you’re after them and they are going to have you taken off the case. That’s why they sent me.”
Paul: “Why are you telling me this?”
Echo: “We have a person inside. This person corrupted the imprint while the programmer wasn’t looking, added this parameter.”
Paul: “Is this the person that sent me the tapes and pictures?”
Echo: “No. This is their first communication. Security inside is very tight.”
Paul: “Where is it?”
Echo: “You can’t know that. You’re going about this the wrong way.”
Paul: “I have to take down the Dollhouse!”
Echo: “There are over twenty Dollhouses, in cities around the world. They have ties to every major political power on the planet. You cannot possibly stop them alone. You’re going to help me? The person that sent this message is.”
Paul: “Why?”
Echo: “The Dollhouse deals in fantasy. That is their business, but that is not their purpose.”
Paul: “What is?”
Echo: “We need you to find out. We’ll contact you again, if possible with this same body. But you have to let the Dollhouse win. Make them back off. You have to trust me.”

(first of: why would Alpha choose to have Echo lie about this being their first conversation? We saw him watch that video in the first episode, so I assumed that he sent it to Paul. It was also established that only Alpha would have the technical skill to hack Topher’s imprints. Am I missing something here? Alpha’s ultimate goal is having Ballard get him into the Dollhouse, right?)

The question for the “purpose” is of course another thing entirely. Ballard knows that technology, once it exists, will be used. We later find out that Boyd understands completely where this technology is going to lead, and has been working on a way to cop-out of his own creation all these years. The purpose, of the Dollhouse, is changing society completely and fundamentally, to an extent, as the theologian (note: not a man on the street, but someone in a class room) in the end of the episode argues, that it becomes unrecognizable and brings the end of civilization.

THERE ARE THREE FLOWERS IN A VASE: THE THIRD FLOWER IS GREEN. / THERE ARE THREE FLOWERS IN A VASE. THE THIRD FLOWER IS YELLOW.

“Forget morality. Imagine it’s true, all right. Imagine this technology being used. Now imagine it being used on you. Everything you believe, gone. Everyone you love, strangers. Maybe enemies. Every part of you that makes you more than a walking cluster on neurons dissolved at someone else’s whim. If that technology exists—it’ll be used. It’ll be abused. It’ll be global. And we will be over. As a species. We will cease to matter. I don’t know, maybe we should.”

Sierra

“Man on the Street” is also the first complete destruction of the seemingly safe haven that is the Dollhouse. Sierra’s handler has been abusing her, and when Adelle confronts him with it, after Boyd figures it all out, he says “You put a bunch of stone foxes with no willpower and no memory running around naked. Did you think this wouldn’t ever happen?” After all, the Dollhouse deals with the things that make human beings work, they profit from exactly the kind of urges, and yet, there were no precautions against this. Hearn uses a cruel call-and-response before raping Sierra – exactly the thing that “The Target” established as this comfortable, ultimate human tie to establish trust between a handler and an Active.

Hearn: “Do you trust me?”
Sierra: “With my life.”
Hearn: “Do you want to play the game?”
Sierra: “No.”
Hearn: “But you remember to be very quite during the game, right?”
Sierra: “Noise is upsetting.”
Hearn: “Lift up your dress.”

We will get hints that Adelle has an infinitely more optimistic view of what they are doing than others do, but this really begs the question of whether this kind of naivety didn’t contribute to the Dollhouse getting “out of order”. We also see how heavily Adelle is starting to rely on Echo, who is all-too ready to come and help (when Boyd and Claire discuss Victor and Sierra, she volunteers “When we go to sleep, when we go into the pods, Sierra cries”, although she shouldn’t even be able to understand that there is an issue.)

For me, the most touching scene of the episode is actually almost small compared to the enormity of what is happening. It happens when Claire, Topher and Boyd are interrogating Victor.

Claire: “How is she different?”
Victor: “I’m sorry.”
Claire: “Victor, do you remember being in the showers with Sierra? You were watching her? How does Sierra make you feel?”
Victor: “Better.”

So much of what is happening in the Dollhouse is about specific fantasies, written scenarios, urges shaped into stories that are then performed by the ultimate actors. Hearing Victor say something so essential about humanity, about what makes us function as human beings, is just completely heart-breaking.

Adelle

While we get to know all these secrets and learn more about Ballard, Adelle still remains a mystery, a wild card in a way.

Dominic: “You played a good hand, ma’am.”
Adelle: “I played a very bad hand very well. There is a distinction.”

She knows that she is potentially losing control (we know to what extent, as she doesn’t even know that Echo’s imprint was tampered with). When Echo, afterwards, tells her that “It isn’t finished” (a picture of a house that she has drawn), and Adelle realizes that she is referencing her meeting with Joel that isn’t completed, she looks at her like she is a child that has just spoken her first words; with pride, in a way, yet already with an inkling that this might go terribly wrong.

Random notes.

When Claire and Boyd first realize that Victor is the prime suspect for what has happened to Sierra, they have this subtle little bond over the fact that both know about Victor’s feelings, and are touched by their sincerity.

Rebecca Mynor, pointing at the rose-petal-covered bed: PORN! Still a favourite.

Ballard: “Tell me about the Dollhouse.”
Joel: “Erm. It’s pink and it opens up and there’s teeny furniture and you put the boy doll on top of the girl doll and we learn about urges.”

“I was the guy with the almost great idea– Floogle and Blahoo! And Facebooger. I was, I was just always one step behind, and she was cool with it.”

The music playing after Mellie is activated is the Concerto For Oboe & Orchestra No. 11 in B-Flat Major, Op. 9: Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni.

Adelle, after Topher removed the experience from Sierra’s head, says “Ignorance in this case truly is bliss”. Once again, a broken promise, as we later find out.

Dollhouse – True happiness requires some measure of self-awareness.

Dollhouse: 1x05 True Believer.

note: apparently I just really don't have a lot to say about this episode. I don't even know why exactly, but well, "Man on the Street" is going to make up for that. 

Senator: “We’re talking about people here who have their very wills taken away.”
Adelle: “Imagine such a thing.”
Senator: “The irony of bringing this to you, Adelle, is not lost on me. I promise you.”

In “True Believer”, Echo is sent into a sectarian community to collect evidence. Topher does something to her head that involves turning her eyes into cameras and her blind, although we are meant to never question the funky science. The episode succeeds in indicating a divide within the Dollhouse: Adelle considers Echo’s adaptability an asset because she is able to improvise whenever a mission goes wrong. Dominic, on the other hand, thinks that they should be predictable, because if they aren’t, Alpha ensues.
The episode draws parallels between the sect and the dollhouse, which is the ultimate sect, in a way, a place where the re-programming to control and manipulate is perfected. On her way there, as Esther Carpenter, she tells Boyd that she wants to become “a new person, more than anything” – once again, that empty promise of leaving your past behind, the promise of the clean slate that can never be fulfilled.
Of course, the Echo we know reappears under the surface of Esther Carpenter once she is required: Jonah Sparrow, the leader of the sect, hits her, which returns her sight, and immediately, she starts to rescue people. If the compound is like a negative of the Dollhouse, Echo demonstrates what she will eventually try inside as well: lead the victims back into the light, back into freedom. “True Believer” doesn’t work very well as an isolated episode, but it is a necessary and important companion piece to “Needs” later in the season, post-“Man on the Street”. It also establishes how far Dominic is willing to go to preserve the status quo: he attempts to kill Echo, hitting her over the head as the compound burns down (of course Boyd comes in to rescue her).

Random notes:

In the subplot this episode, Topher realizes that Victor has a “man-reaction” when he showers with Sierra, which leads to hours of shower-tapes. I wish we’d seen more of Topher and Claire in season two because they were already awesome together BEFORE parts of their history were revealed.

Once again, Mellie redefines “leftovers” by bringing an entire pie to Paul at the police station. She also brings an envelope containing the video we saw Alpha watching in the first episode.

Echo: “The blind girl is looking you in the eye. Do you know what that means? It means God brought me here. He has a message for you. And that message… is “MOVE YOUR ASS!” Go! Come on!”

This was out-of-character for both Echo AND Esther Carpenter. Of course, it was a nice nod to everybody who’d be content with Eliza Dushku being Faith for the rest of her life, but… it doesn’t really help these initial episodes of “Dollhouse” at all.

Topher and Claire, after their nerve-wrecking task, totally ship Victor and Sierra, and aren’t exactly happy when Adelle tells them to “scrub” Victor.

Dollhouse - Here’s a promise: all this scary, painful stuff—you won’t even remember.

Dollhouse: 1x04 Gray Hour.

Why would anybody hire a doll as a mid-wife? All these ideas contribute essential bits and pieces about Echo’s slow self-realization, but they require an amount of suspended disbelief that is a bit too much for a new show trying to find its stride. I’d actually never seen any of these early episodes more than once because there was nothing in them I thought I wanted to see again: I still remembered the bits and pieces that were salvageable later, but the glue that keeps it together, the stories, were never intriguing enough to return to.

The beginning of the episode is intriguing because it’s about reversed roles: Echo, as the mid-wife, tells the mother that she “won’t remember the pain”, which is exactly the same empty promise the dollhouse gives the more willing Actives – the promise of the possibility of a tabula rasa is what keeps the Dollhouse running. Of course, the very next moment the initial premise is already coming apart at the seams, as Echo, Victor and Sierra “group” together, which they shouldn’t.

Topher: “They’re eating lunch together, man friend. Same three. Even the same table. They’re grouping.”
Boyd: “Are you saying they remember each other?”
Topher: “No, no, no, no. No. The wipes are clean. This goes deeper than memory into instinctual survival patterns. Flocking. Whole mess of sparrows turning on a dime. Uh, salmon trucking upstream. This isn’t a book club, man friend. This is the herd.”
Boyd: “They’re not bison, Topher.”
Topher: “They’re a little bit bison.”
Boyd: “Well, they didn’t used to be.”
Topher: “They volunteered for this.”
Boyd: “So we’re told.”

The idea that some instincts go deeper than where Topher can reach with his magic chair returns in season two, with “Instinct”. Topher never learns his lessons, and his hubris in watching Echo evolve yet still thinking that he has it all under control because of the big brain of his is what will eventually bring about the end of civilization.

The heist itself follows all the genre convention: a team of thieves, all with their own specific areas of specialty, naturally mistrusting of each other. The thing that literally blows apart the art heist and the conventions that come with it is the first employment of a remote wipe: Taffy’s self-assuredness disappears, and the girl waking up underground has no idea how to get out.

Topher: “That’s not… Uh-uh. That didn’t happen. How do I know that didn’t happen? Because that can’t happen.”
Adelle: “Topher, what can’t happen?”
Dominic: “This goes nowhere good.”
Topher: “I’m pretty sure… I’m kind of positive, actually, that something happened. The exact same thing happened, except without the chair.”
Adelle: “You’ve stated that remote wipes aren’t possible.”
Topher: “I’ve said they’re untested. I’ve said they’re a very bad, bad idea. I’ve said I can’t do them.”
Adelle: “How do we undo it?”
Topher: “We - don’t? Somebody out there figured out our frequency, hacked into our call, and that’s not even the hard part. I mean, we’re talking about someone… I could not have seen this coming. This is not my fault.”

This one’s broken.

Even in her disturbed state after waking up as Echo in the vault, she still contains everything that will be so important in the future. She sees a portrait by picture and recognizes that it looks “broken” (Echo sees things that are broken and tries to fix them).

Echo: “It doesn’t look right.”
Walton: “It’s not about looking right. Art’s about feeling right and you… have no idea what I’m talking about.”
Echo: “She makes me feel funny.”
Walton: “Well, that’s ‘cause these other guys… they painted what they saw. But this guy, he painted what is. That’s what art’s for: to show us who we are. And this one - it’s saying how we start off whole, then somewhere along the line, the pieces start to slide. We get broken.”
Echo: “That’s sad.”
Vitas: “No, it’s weak.”

What a beautiful summary of one of the most used trope on any Whedon-show: people starting out whole, falling apart.

It only takes Echo a couple of minutes in this episode to turn from the fragile Active who needs to be helped to the resourceful hero of the story who is perfectly able to help herself.

Echo: “I’m not broken.”
Boyd: “No. You’re not”

While Echo’s self-realization (in this episode, she paints a broken face in the mirror after being wiped) is at the centre of the first season, another equally important part is seeing how the establishment reacts to what she does, how Adelle adapts to the new situation. After “Gray Hour”, she has to deal with both Echo’s changed status (“Michelangelo believed his sculptures already existed inside the marble, waiting to be freed.” – which is exactly what Echo is, and by the end of season two, more than one person works to free that person, but for different reasons) and the fact that Alpha is bringing her house in disorder from the outside. She admits to Topher that Alpha is not dead. Adelle telling Topher the truth about Alpha and asking him to help deal with the situation is what starts so many things. Topher, when he realizes what Alpha’s technology is, sounds incredibly frightened but at the same time, in complete awe.

Random notes:

Blue skies, Five by Five. It’s the special handshake of a small and select group.

It’s really a wasted opportunity that we didn’t follow Sierra to more engagements. This is actually the first time that we see two people playing the same characters, and I think Dichen Lachman does a great job (of course I appreciate that they went a more traumatic route with Priya, but Sierra had a lot of potential in these first few episodes that wasn’t used).

There’s also something about Paul and Lubov this episode, but frankly I didn’t pay much attention. APPARENTLY THIS IS ONE OF MY LEAST FAVOURITE EPISODES?

Dollhouse - Special isn’t always a good thing here.

Dollhouse: 1x04 Stage Fright.

“Stage Fright” is the “Beer Bad” of “Dollhouse”. Barely anybody calls this episode their favourite one, and there is so much in it that doesn’t work (like, for example, the initial premise that a bodyguard who “instinctually” protects is better than a normal one, which is a very lame excuse to make Eliza sing… but I do concur that the appearance of a demon might have been even more unlikely in the “Dollhouse”-universe, so whatever). “Stage Fright” kind of works in the greater context of the entire show, so maybe all the little flaws are necessary. There is a subtle and well-exercised theme in the episode: that Rayna, the pop singer, is like Echo. People project their own ideas and dreams on her, and she feels trapped in the world this creates. The question is what happens to personal freedom and free will if someone is always in the spotlight, always watched (Claire tells Boyd, as they are trying to have a private conversation in the Dollhouse: “Someone else is watching”, and Boyd replies, “Someone always is”. That’s exactly how Rayna feels). In the beginning of the episode, she literally emerges from a large cage to give her performance (not soon after, one of her background dancers catches fire).
The second, more relevant thread: Echo isn’t just discovering herself in the Dollhouse, she doesn’t just retain fragments of her imprinted personalities but also discovers the tightly controlled world that surrounds her in a fashion that should not be possible for a “wiped” Active.

Echo: “I didn’t want you to get hurt. You’re my friend.”
Sierra: “Friends help each other out?”
Echo: “Yes. They do.”

Later in the series we see that this desire to help and save is something Echo got from ghost Caroline, and eventually perfected much more than the flawed Caroline ever could.
Rayna’s death wish is a misguided attempt to regain control and independence in a life that is mostly controlled by others (“I’m not crazy / I just want to be free”). When Jordan/Echo finds and reads some of her fan mail, she says “these people think they actually have a relationship with you” – paralleling the relationship clients have with the Actives when they book them for an engagement.

Echo/Jordan: “What misery? What have you got to be miserable about?”
Rayna: “No. Right, uh… I got to be happy. I got to be grateful. I got to be rebellious—but just enough to give me cred, so people know I’m not a factory girl. But I am. I don’t exist. I’m not a real person. I’m everybody’s fantasy. And God help me if I try not to be. No, you weren’t grown in the lab, but I was. Been singing for my supper since when and before when and for everybody else! God put this voice in me and forgot to make it mine. I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything. For a long while. But I know he’s out there, the reaper, and any minute now, Boom, freedom. There’s your rush. There’s your joy. I can hear. I can hear myself.”
Echo/Jordan: “I think you hear yourself just fine. Maybe you want to listen to somebody else, like, say, ever. You don’t like your life, change it.”
Rayna: “They won’t let me!”
Echo/Jordan: “You make them let you. You’re feeling pain, but all you’re doing is spreading it around. God, the last thing I ever thought you’d turn out to be was weak.”

The question is how much freedom and control over their own life people have who are faced with so many expectations. Echo is the extreme case of someone created to do nothing but reflect other people’s expectations; the twist in the scene is, naturally, that Rayna and Jordan both don’t know (that she was, literally, grown in a lab). There is the imprinted instinct to help Rayna any way Jordan can, but there is also the essential character trait Echo has, which is to help people who are in need. Once again, she goes far beyond the parameters of her programming, realizing that saving Rayna’s life isn’t the same as saving Rayna, and there is the conflicting need to help Sierra (who for some entirely inexplicable reason was sent in as back-up, yet lacks any powers to work as such), who was kidnapped by the crazy fan. She has conflicting allegiances: there’s Jordan/Rayna, but there is also Echo/Sierra.

Echo/Jordan: “Getting what you want may not be the best thing for a person. […] I have to help her.”

She fulfils everything that was expected of her, but as Dominic will say later: you’re just worried when your dog starts to speak. She saves Sierra and “cures” Rayna of her death wish, which is much more than just protecting her from a crazy stalker. The following dialogue between Adelle and Dominic is well in character, and Adelle’s infatuation with Echo will continue until the end of the show – she is, under the surface of the harsh business woman, a scientist and curious about Echo’s potential, while Dominic only sees her as a security risk.

Dominic: “She’s a risk. An increasing risk.”
Adelle: “She had control over the situation.”
Dominic: “But we can’t control her. I’m recommending that we send Echo to the Attic. Before someone else ends up dead, or worse, she compromises this organization.”
Adelle: “I believe she acted in our best interest.”
Dominic: “She went off mission.”
Adelle: “In fact, I believe she did quite the opposite. She stopped the person who wanted Rayna dead. It just happened to be Rayna herself, and by quite literally dangling the threat of death in front of her, she prevented Rayna from ever being a danger to herself in the future. Echo took the mission parameter…”

This is one of the first times that it really becomes clear how deep the trenches within the hierarchy of the dollhouse are; and that there is a divided interest, a no consensus at all between everybody who isn’t an Active. Dominic and Adelle, we assume at this point, constitute the team that will protect the Dollhouse at all cost, although they have a different idea about what “protecting” means. Boyd and Claire, on the other hand…

Boyd: “And did even better. She seems to have the ability to think outside of the pieces that we give her and then create…”
Claire: “Create a new approach to the problem.”
Boyd: “It’s impressive. I don’t know what it means, but it’s impressive. She really is special.”
Claire: “Special isn’t always a good thing here, Boyd.”
Boyd: “DeWitt’s a businesswoman. Is she really going to harm her best Active?”
Claire: “Echo wasn’t always the best.”
Boyd: “You’re talking about Alpha.”
Claire: “I’m just saying, sometimes the best thing to hope for is good enough.”

Apart from the incredible foreshadowing to “Omega” (because WHISKEY used to be the best, this wasn’t a reference to Alpha at all, even though Claire doesn’t know it herself), this is also significant because this is exactly how these characters are going to develop this season. Boyd sees the potential in Echo the same way Adelle does, but he sees it as a revolutionary potential, not as something that helps to keep the status quo. Claire is cautious because she understands that the Dollhouse is a machinery and that you don’t win against it, so sometimes you have to act against the interest of the people the Actives were before to protect them.

The last moment is Echo’s. She realizes that she isn’t supposed to be friends with Sierra, and to protect her, she signals “no” when she tries to come over.

Tech.

Paul: “The technology exists.”
Lubov: “It… somebody made a monkey tango, right? It doesn’t mean it’s being used on people.”
Paul: “It does. It means that.”
Lubov: “How do you know?”
Paul: “We split the atom, we make a bomb. We come up with anything new, the first thing we do is destroy, manipulate, control. It’s human nature.”
Lubov: “Yeah, people are mostly crap. I don’t think there’s a Dollhouse. I hear different, I’ll get word.”

It was so hard to dismiss Paul (I did until the Boyd-reveal), but of course here he presents the central idea of Dollhouse: something that can be thought can’t be unthought (thunk?). I always thought that Vincenzo Natali’s “Cube” was a smart movie because it did not present a way out: the cube exists because it CAN exist. And since it exists, it must be used, because it’s human nature to try and experiment.

Random notes:

The scene in which Mellie literally catches Lubov trying to break into Paul’s apartment makes much more sense knowing that she was programmed for this and that her entire existence is about Paul. When Paul is not there, she is waiting for him to return. There is nothing else to do.

Every single time I watch an episode, there is this moment that takes me completely by surprise, and I remember that in-between all the complications, the philosophy, the flawed humanity, there is a lightness that would be unimaginable if anybody else had worked with the same material. There is no Scooby gang, and that took some time getting used to, but this is still so essentially Whedon…

Topher: “Boyd? What you guys buddies now? Oh god. Of course you are. You both disapprove of everything. You’re gonna get married and have scowly babies.”

Was the Victor-Lubov reveal a great deal when it happened because it introduced the idea that any number of people we’d already met might be dolls (or, as I felt back in February 2009, ONE OF THE FINAL FIVE!!!)? I think I completely missed it the first time around because it took me forever to pay enough attention to the show to catch it.

Oh, right, Paul gets shot.